I’m not going to tell you that I know anything about operating heavy machinery or working in a dockyard, but I’ll sure as heck say that after playing Docked, I feel like maybe… I could bluff it. Developer Saber Interactive, known for vehicle sim RoadCraft, have built an entire game around picking up and relocating heavy loads. Let’s just say, I think they made a wise choice not calling it Docking.
You’re tasked with handling a range of different machinery to get important shipments moved across the fictional Port Wake. And I’ll admit, the concept at first left me feeling a little worried I’d find it a tad boring, perhaps a little repetitive. But, Saber Interactive have lovingly tossed in varying levels of peril and a punishing system that’ll penalise you for any mistakes you make to create a sim that at times is surprisingly thrilling.
Life in Port Wake
For my first run through, I opted to play in Standard mode with simplified container capture, decreased suspended load swing, and no deadline for economic milestones. At first, that meant pretty much nothing to me, but it made all the difference when starting out. Having the capture do a little bit of the graft, watching how easy it is for my ropes to swing all over the place, and not having to feel the pressure of getting anything done in a particular time were some really early lessons. Plus, I’m trying to run a dock, not stress myself out.
But it is, actually, surprisingly stressful. Straight off the bat, I’m told Hurricane Wendy is about to hit. For such a lovely name, she certainly wasn’t planning anything nice, ripping through Port Wake and causing some real drama on the choppy seas. And thus began a theme that ran through my time with Docked. While you might not have a timer counting you down (unless you’re doing a challenge with an optional time bonus), there’s a real sense of jeopardy pushed through the radio narrative and that made me want to act faster, even if no one was actually making me.
I went from not knowing a single thing about the machinery to telling myself that the straddle carrier is top-tier and that I’d rather pour oil in my eyes than struggle through another U-turn in the terminal tractor. And I guess that’s the real beauty of this game, I got to try out something I’d never ever get to do in real-life (and having learnt about how dangerous it is, I wouldn’t want to). But, chipping away at my jobs happily, and at times frustratingly, from the safety of my PC was a concept I found incredibly intriguing.
Radio chatter
Akin to the side mission you may know (and if like me, quite enjoyed) from GTA V, you’re working on a busy dockyard. But, unlike GTA V, there’s a whole family dynamic behind it. Day-in-day-out your father, Bill, who looks a little like Saul from Breaking Bad, gives you jobs to do and makes sure that you don’t get too much praise for completing them.
Something I didn’t expect from Docked was an actual narrative, but there most certainly is one living among your various radio interactions with Bill, your old friend Mark, and Mark’s sister, Kate. You also get to play as Mark and Kate, depending which machinery you’re using, though there’s not much difference aside from seeing their bodies manning the cabin.
While Tommy seemingly dreamt of an alternative path in life, he’s come back to help revive the family business, somewhat abandoning another dream. Watching this unravel over the radios was an interesting distraction from the tasks at hand, like listening to a podcast when I’m trying to complete a hard run.
Hard graft
Essentially, you’re lifting up cargo, from shipping containers to gravel to trailers, and moving it to another place. True to life, I’m sure there’s nothing overtly exciting about this concept. What you need to focus on doing though, is a really good job. If you don’t, your terrible costly mistakes will wreak havoc on the dockyard. An aspect that is managed in a damage bar, anything below 100% you’ll survive the mission.
And while I thought I’d get bored and lose focus, opting instead to see what sort of fun I could have, I quickly shifted into taking it incredibly seriously. So much so, my daughter asked me why I kept frowning. “I’m working hard”, I told her, “the dockyard needs me”. My lack of patience would’ve only resulted in me having to redo a lengthy mission because of my own stupidity. Something I learned the hard way when I toppled my reach stacker completely over trying to perform a vigorous turn. I got out and took a look, but I certainly couldn’t get back in.
Despite all my frowning, Docked is actually rather lovely to look at. Beautifully designed and actually quite similarly matched graphically to the likes of GTA V, Saber Interactive has done a stellar job. Sure, there’s the odd glitch; an overzealous pond reflection quivering uncontrollably, or the wrong camera angle sticking inside a shipping container or vibrating out of nowhere, but ultimately it’s clean and possesses a certain fluidity. You’re doing a lot of clunky work, but it doesn’t have to feel like it.
If you take a moment to appreciate the environment, you begin to notice the puddles rippling, the palm tree fronds swaying in the breeze, the rain drops differentiating the days and, sometimes, singular traffic cones flying away due to your unsteady driving. All being said, it’s weirdly peaceful.
Easy does it
Docked is a lesson in patience. There’s definitely a repetitiveness to the work you do that’ll test whether you want to invest your time, but Saber Interactive do a couple of things to try and liven up the monotony. Firstly, you’re not only responsible for operating around the dockyard, you’re also handed the purse strings. Each day, you have to perform upgrades, invest in new vehicles, and handle the shipping orders to try and turn a profit. Completing jobs earns you building materials and money for costly upgrades and that increases how much TEU you can shift (a maritime unit of measurement for 20-foot containers).
At the end of each day, you do some maths (unexpectedly) to deal with the processing of the TEU depending on how many machines you have and what they can handle. I found this to be a little finicky, attempting to find an equilibrium, desperately trying to hit the milestone goals that are also laid out for you. Fortunately, you can use some of your hard-earned cash to instruct the AI to do the work for you. A nice little reprieve when I couldn’t make the math… math.
For me, I didn’t see much correlation between this part and the jobs I had to do. Yes, I was making upgrades that apparently levelled up Port Wake, but aside from unlocking new vehicles, it didn’t seem to look any different. It might’ve been nice to explore different areas or see visual upgrades to what I was doing as a reward for my hard work. Sure, it aided my progression, but I didn’t feel like I actually saw much cause and effect.
Getting your hands dirty
Docked isn’t just about operating heavy machinery or crunching numbers. You also have to actually fix the machinery from time to time. To do this, you’re handed a scanner to assess the damage to your machinery and find out what needs repairing. And then, you get to fix your problem with a world of mini-games from rotating chips to lining up hydraulics. This mechanic is a welcome reprieve and a fun side quest, though only offers a slight reprieve until you’re back to operating the big guns, like the STS crane.
At its core, the nitty-gritty of Docked is operating the machinery, but there’s an additional layer to give you time away from your cabin. You’ll often have to climb the ladders yourself to get where you need to be, find the power switch, turn the lights on, lower the boom, start the engine, and more, all before you even get started on your job.
While it’s an attempt to lighten up the gameplay with variation, it did end up, again, feeling a little repetitive. There are only so many times I want to climb up a ladder, especially when I have to interact with it directly where it tells me to or it won’t respond. A huge part of the game is this, switching between different machinery that all come with a lot of controls. Fortunately, Docked doesn’t make you remember these off by heart, they’re complex, but you’ll always have them at hand dropping down on the screen as needed.
Then, there’s the additional camera angles they give you so you can line up your machinery and drive around the dockyard. This is a great addition to the game that, for the majority of the time, worked perfectly. Then there were the times when I ended up questioning whether I actually knew what a centre of gravity was, especially frustrating after performing a 13-point turn to get out of a particularly tight spot.
Ultimately, as a simulation, it does a stellar job at feeling like the real deal, adding additional processes to your job, encouraging you to expand Port Wake and ensuring you’re looking after the smooth running of the daily operation. I didn’t just feel like a cog in a wheel, I felt like an integral part. I’m just not sure, like Tommy, that I really want to go to bed dreaming about the alignment of shipping containers. But, a longshoreman’s job is never done, after all.
